Welcome to the October edition of The Inbox Coach. As the nights get darker and things get busier at work, I want to spend this month looking at burnout and how to avoid it.
This month I’ve chosen the topic of burnout. I’m hearing lots from my clients and colleagues that work is getting busier, and we’ve all had a rough 18 months, so we aren’t starting from a great place. When you are tired and busy it can be easy to just push through, thinking that once it gets a bit quieter everything will be ok, but if you aren’t careful burnout could be just around the corner.
My burnout story
If there is one career topic I will never stop talking about it is burnout. Burning out and having a health crisis that led to me developing a chronic illness has made me completely re-evaluate what I want from work and set me off on a whole different career path.
I went through an extended period of stress at work and instead of addressing how I was feeling, I just kept pushing through. I had difficult things going on in my home life too, and after a few months it all just got too much, so I resigned from my job and moved from the retail sector into the world of charity retail to try and find some balance in my life. That change eventually led me to coaching and, well here I am today, enjoying my career, looking after my health and living my life.
I wish that I hadn’t burnt out, but the lessons I have learnt from it have transformed how I approach my work and I think I’ve become better at my job and better at living my life because of it. The biggest lesson I learnt from burning out at work is that I am not invincible. I can’t keep pushing through because my body is not a machine. I also realised that allowing myself to get so run down means I am not able to do my best work. It is far better to notice when things aren’t feeling great and take a small action immediately than to wait for things to get so bad that it takes me weeks or months to recover.
Avoiding burnout
The WHO identifies3 characteristics of burnout
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job
Reduced professional efficacy
These are the exact opposite of what I help my clients to say about their work when they have a fulfilling career, and you can see how miserable it would be to try and work in these conditions. I’ve covered lots of topics that help to prevent burnout, such as Boundaries, Rest and Resilience, but what I want to emphasise this month is how important it is to pay attention to how you are feeling and doing something about it when you don’t feel great.
I believe that everyone has the right to feel good at work and when you don’t, the only way it will change is if you do something about it. Feeling unhappy in your job and not taking any actions towards making a change is not going to end well. It is far better to tackle some of the causes of your unhappiness than wait for things to become so awful that you have no other choice but to find a new job.
The exception to this is when not feeling great at work is down to systemic issues such as racism or sexism in the workplace. I don’t believe you can always change these situations, you showing up with a new mindset isn’t going to stop other people putting barriers in the way of your career, but acknowledging what you can and can’t control can help you to feel empowered about how to tackle the situation you are in. ACAS offers amazing support if you are being unfairly treated at work.
Reflection
*If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add this email to your calendar
No company is going to care about your health and well-being as much as you are. No matter how many resilience and well-being courses they offer or how supportive your manger is, you are so much more invested in your health than they are. That means you have to advocate for yourself and if you need a break, different support or to step away entirely then it is up to you to make that happen.
If you are starting to feel tired, overwhelmed and negative about your job, or you are finding doing your best work hard, ask yourself these questions:
How am I feeling today?
How long have I been feeling this way?
What is causing me to feel like this?
What do I need to do to take a step back from everything that is going on?
What action do I need to take to change my situation?
How would I like to feel at work?
What is one thing I can do to start to feel more that way?
Burnout doesn’t usually happen in a moment; it is the build-up of weeks or months of feeling stressed. Being able to notice when these feelings come up and take an immediate action helps you to prevent things getting to the point where you burn out completely.
Action
The most common reaction I see to not feeling great at work is to acknowledge that things don’t feel great and think that it will go away. After this project, this meeting, this deadline, if I just get these things out of the way I will start to feel ok again. This might be true, but often the deadline passes, you have worked even harder to get it done, and the feeling lingers only now you are also exhausted because you haven’t been resting or taking a step back either and it is a downward spiral to burnout.
Task
When you find yourself stressed or unhappy at work, give yourself permission to sit with those feelings and think about what is going on, rather than pushing through and hoping that it goes away. Make time to answer the reflection questions and see if you can make one small change, rather than brushing your concerns aside and just carrying on.
If you can’t do the exercises from this email now, then don’t forget to pick a time when you are going to do them and add the prompts in this email to your calendar.
Inspiration
“Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.” - Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday's voice is rich, but it is so tinged with sadness and pain. No song demonstrates this pain more than her version of Strange Fruit, a protest song about the lynching of black men in American in the 1930s. It is a haunting song and Billie Holiday and her manager ensured that it was played with due respect, she closed her shows with it, the waiters stopped serving drinks and the room was in darkness with a single spotlight on Billie singing. After the performance there would be no encore. Billie Holiday died at the age of 44 following a lifetime of addiction to drugs and alcohol.
I don't know if this quote is about addiction or just not knowing where your boundaries are. For me it really demonstrates how burnout showed up in my career. It was only when things had got to the point of being beyond awful that I stopped and said “this is enough!” I like to think now that I know when I’m approaching the point where a challenge at work turns into a stressful situation, and I can do the things I need to prevent burnout.
If I could do one thing as a coach it would be to empower people to feel so good at work that they don’t ever experience burnout. I can’t prevent all bad days, but I know that with a clear vision for you career and making time to reflect on how you feel, you can take charge. If you are ready to put a plan in place for your career then I can help you. My Career Action Plan is an hour of reflection and planning to help you to make the most out of your career over the next few months. You can book a session here or get in touch to find out more.
I’m going to be talking about burnout all this month on Instagram and LinkedIn so do follow along and get involved in the conversation. I’ll be back with a nudge email to help you make time for your development next week
